ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The journey of bringing out this book has been very short. It was conceived and realized within a span of a few weeks, thanks to the generosity of the authors and editorial team members who put in extra effort to bring it out, realizing the urgency of the topic. We got several psychologists and students of psychology to respond to the call to write their reflections and reports on how they had responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. I wish to acknowledge my sincere thanks to all the authors who had responded to my invitation and gave their contributions on time, irrespective of their professional engagements in responding to the pandemic. Amidst personal losses, inconvenience during lockdown days and struggle to meet personal demands, each of them took time to write, by sharing their reflections.
Thanks are to Aarzoo, Dr. Anagha Lavalekar, Dr. Annie John, Dr. Chetna Duggal, Ms. Debora Myrtle Anish, Dr. Dherandra Kumar, Ms. Lamia Bagasrawala, Dr. Manju Agrawal, Dr. Paulson V. Veliyannoor, Dr. Prasanta Kumar Roy, Dr. B.J. Prashantham, Ms. Reena Thomas, Ms. Smriti Joshi, Dr. Sujala Watve, Mrs. Sunita Jitendra Gaud and Dr. S. Venkatesan who had authored various chapters.
Thanks to Ms. D.S.L. Amulya, Ms. Asima Mishra, Ms. T. Kalpna, Dr. Neha Sayeed, Dr. NovRattan Sharma and Dr. Prerna Sharma for submitting articles in response to the announcement made through different social media and indiacaps.in. I also wish to express my thanks to all the others who had responded but could not be accommodated in this book.
Various national, state and regional level psychology associations were contacted and thanks to Dr. NovRattan Sharma, General Secretary, IAAP; Dr. K. Rangaswamy, Dr. Suresh Kumar and Srinivasan Jayaraman of TNACP and Ms. Saras Bhaskar and colleagues Ms. S. Divyaprabha, Mr. Ganesh Nerur, Ms. Kalpana Suryakumar, Nandini Raman, R. Suryakumar and Dr. T.R. Uma of CCF who gave their perspectives, record of activities and future plans of their respective associations in responding to the pandemic.
Special thanks to the Editorial team members Dr. Annie John, Ms. M. A. Debora, Dr. Preethi Krishnan and Dr. J. Jasseer for sparing their time and energy to give a better shape to this work as it appears now and for associating to present an overview of this book.
Thanks to Ms. Aarzoo, Ms. M. A. Debora, Dr. Emilda Judy, Dr. Lena Robinson, Dr. Neena David, Dr. Nitha Thomas, and Dr. Preethi Krishnan, for helping me with the review of the articles.
Finally, my sincere thanks to my wife, Helen Joy, daughter Neha and son-in-law Navin. Thanks to Milan, four year old grandson, for letting me to work in his ‘toy room’ during the lockdown days, though occasionally he complained about me not playing with him and ‘advised me’ to take rest instead of ‘working all the time’.
Leister Sam Sudheer Manickam
(L. S. S. Manickam)